NYC Gallery Scene – Highlights Through September 10, 2017

This September, New York is teeming with gallery show openings, with new exhibits popping up in Chelsea, Downtown, Uptown and Brooklyn. Artists explore works on linen and paper, sculptures and paintings, or a blending of the two, and installations. With both emerging and established artists, a wide range of styles will be on view, from Mannerist painting, photorealist portraiture and tactile woven floor works to quilted figure sculptures. Artists blur the lines between digital and analog, using the dialogue of the digital age, while simultaneously looking back to past masters for reference. Subjects highlight racism, feminism, police brutality, climate change and sexuality, giving viewers a space to contemplate and learn.

CHELSEA:

Marianne Boesky Gallery East: “Sanford Biggers: Selah”

September 7 through October 21, 2017

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 7 from 6 to 8 p.m.

In his first solo exhibition with Marianne Boesky Gallery, Sanford Biggers presents “Selah,” a multi-media show that highlights often overlooked cultural and political narratives in the United States.

Bigger’s exhibition includes quilted sculptures, including Selah, the 10-foot-tall work that gives the show its title, and Seated Warrior, a part of the artist’s “BAM”series that responds to recent and ongoing acts of police brutality against black Americans. Both sculptures are derived from wooden African sculptures but transformed in different ways to highlight police brutality. Seated Warrior is cast in bronze and has been shot with a bullet, while Selah, covered in an antiqued quilt, is posed as if about to bend in prayer, eerily similar to someone in a “hands up, don’t shoot” position.

Lyons Wier Gallery: “Mary Henderson: Public Views”

September 7 through 30, 2017

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 7 from 6 to 8 p.m.

Lyons Wier Gallery will present Mary Henderson’s newest exhibition, “Public Views,” a series of naturalistic paintings of crowds in open spaces exploring group identity and the contrast between public and private self and group and individual identity.

Henderson’s paintings, which are a response to the democratization of image making via smartphone photography, depict the subjects with minimal visual locational cues, to show unguarded moments of vulnerability, reflection or preoccupation. Drawn from photos she has taken, Henderson pairs the vocabulary of digital snapshot photography with the figurative tradition to tie contemporary culture to art-historical precedents.

Sikkema Jenkins & Co.: “Kara Walker”

September 7 through October 14, 2017

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 7 from 6 to 8 p.m.

Sikkema Jenkins & Co. will present Kara Walker’s newest works on paper and on linen in an exhibition that the artist has titled: “Sikkema Jenkins and Co. Is Compelled to Present the Most Astounding and Important Painting Show of the Fall Art Show Viewing Season!”

Kara Walker, who is known for her candid investigation of race, gender, sexuality and violence through silhouetted figures, will exhibit new works made mainly during the summer of 2017. In her artist statement, rendered reluctantly, Walker asserts she is “tired of ‘being a role model’” and a featured member of “my racial group and/or gender niche,” her weariness stemming from“standing up, being counted … ‘having a voice’” in the face of current political strife and ever-present racism in the U.S. as revealed in white nationalist and white supremacist rallies and violence. Walkers description of the new exhibition concludes with: “It’s not exhaustive, activist or comprehensive in any way.”

Alexander Gray Associates: “Polly Apfelbaum: The Potential of Women”

September 7 through October 21, 2017

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 7 from 6 to 8 p.m.

In her first exhibition with Alexander Gray Associates, Polly Apfelbaum will present new work in the multimedia show “The Potential of Women,” inspired by the cover design and visual motifs from a 1963 book of the same name.

Apfelbaum’s exhibition features gouache drawings, hand-woven rugs, and wall-mounted ceramics, often depicting the flattened, stylized woman’s face from the exhibition-inspiring book cover. With orange, pink and white striped walls, Apfelbaum turns the second floor of the gallery into an immersive environment and expands the visuals of the political landscape surrounding the 2017 election and the women’s march that it inspired.

Galerie Lelong & Co., New York: “Lin Tianmiao: Protruding Patterns”

September 7 through October 21, 2017

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 7 from 6 to 8 p.m.

Galerie Lelong & Co. will present Lin Tianmiao’s “Protruding Patterns,” a solo exhibition of tactile work that transforms the main gallery with woven carpets, along with a show of new paintings and sculptures.

In the making of the exhibition, Lin spent six years collecting around 2,000 words and expressions about women in various languages from popular novels, newspapers, the internet and colloquial dialogue, ranging from derogatory to empowering. The words are woven into raised thick wool forms and viewers are encouraged to touch the works of textiles and thread to feel the visceral and literal protruding patterns. Along with the textiles, Lin will be presenting a selection of new paintings and sculptures in the adjacent gallery.

Pace Gallery: “Maya Lin: Ebb and Flow”

In her fourth exhibition with Pace Gallery, Maya Lin will present new installations and sculptures in “Ebb and Flow.”

Continuing Lin’s investigation of water in its different states, the exhibition will feature wall and floor works made from recycled silver, marble, steel pins and glass marbles. The installations translate maps of the water at Victoria Falls and in the Nile River, the Arctic and the Antarctic Seas into comprehensible humanly-scaled forms. The exhibit also features two new “Silver River” works depicting the Nile and Columbia Rivers with recycled silver—to symbolically portray a finite resource with recycled material—and a three-dimensional drawing illustrating the dispersion and movement of waterways.

By showing the transitory state of water and the earth itself, the exhibition attempts to capture the shifting natural world, particularly during a time of climate change and rapid human development.

DOWNTOWN:

Betty Cuningham Gallery: “Christopher Wilmarth”

Betty Cuningham Gallery will present “Christopher Wilmarth,” an exhibition of the late artist’s sculptures and drawings.

The exhibition will feature four sculptures, made during the 1970s, and 11 works on paper by Christopher Wilmarth (1943-1987), who made some 150 sculptures during his career. Of the sculptures, three are maquettes (small scale models) for seminal works. The fourth is Sonoma Corners, a wall piece titled for the artist’s birthplace in California. The works on paper include three that work as portraits and eight sketches that focus on where light resides in his sculptures.

The Hole: “Alex Gardner: RomCom”

In his first solo show in New York, Alex Gardner will present “RomCom” at the Hole, a show featuring 14 new acrylic on linen paintings.

Done in a Mannerist style, the paintings depict entangled black bodies in pastel environments, separated by dramatically folding white cotton separates. In the featureless smooth faces, gender is only hinted at; the expression is told through body language while cultural signifiers are smoothed over as a way to universalize the figures. Gardner ties in imagery from classical painting to open up the historical perspectives while simultaneously asserting his contemporary identity into the history of art.

Thierry Goldberg Gallery: “Louis Fratino: So, I’ve Got You”

With subjects painted using vibrant hues and tactile surfaces, Fratino’s portraiture depicts a relatable sentimentality by transforming quotidian activities, like eating, lounging or loving, into opportunities to reflect on the complexities of life. The works expand upon concepts of desire and male sexuality and are inspired by events from Fratino’s past, even if just through moods or remembered environments.

UPTOWN:

Hauser & Wirth: “Mira Schendel: Sarrafos and Black and White Works”

Hauser & Wirth will present “Mira Schendel: Sarrafos and Black and White Works,” an exhibition featuring the last two series of the late artist’s career.

The exhibition features six works from the “Sarrafos”series, composed of white tempera panels intersected by a single, angled black bar, and works from “Brancos e Pretos,” seemingly flat panels punctuated by painted arcs and lines that reveal slight variations of texture to cast shadows and form subtle sculptural reliefs.

Mira Schendel (1919-1988), a seminal figure in the Latin American modern art scene who formed her own approach to abstraction with influences from quantum physics to Zen Buddhism, attempted to reconcile the practices of painting and sculpture with these series. Related drawings and works on paper from the 1960s through the 1980s will also be on display.

Lévy Gorvy: “Pat Steir: Kairos”

In her first New York exhibition with Lévy Gorvy, Pat Steir will exhibit “Kairos,” a series of paintings that draw on conceptual openness and chance.

The show will feature new work by the artist, including five 11-foot-tall oil on canvas paintings and eight smaller-scale works. In these pieces, Steir carries on her technique of using intuition and accident, as the works were created by climbing on ladders and lifts to pour paint down on upright canvases.

The exhibition title, which comes from a poem by Anne Waldman written specifically for the show, translates to a propitious moment for decision and action, something integral to Steir’s work. With titles such as Melancholy and Aporia, her non-objective paintings are lush and sweeping in scale, with planes of complex color and texture situated on and between a central fissure.

Lévy Gorvy is located at 909 Madison Avenue, at 73rd Street, New York, NY 10021. www.levygorvy.com.

BROOKLYN:

Victori + Mo: “House Work by Jonathan Chapline”

September 8 through October 22, 2017

Opening Reception: Friday, September 8 from 6 to 9 p.m.

Victori + Mo will present “House Work by Jonathan Chapline,” a solo exhibition of new works by the artist.

Jonathan Chapline, whose work investigates digital aesthetics, will show medium- and large-scale paintings and sculptures that further explore how technological developmentsimpact the ways we mediate the world around us.

For this exhibition, the artist has painted the interior gallery walls electric indigo, a color dominating the background space of many of his paintings. The paintings are presented alongside sculptures arranged on a table, which are representations of the objects depicted within his paintings.Chapline’s process blends traditional sketching and painting with rendering softwares, blurring the lines between digital and analog representation to create work that is reminiscent of both cell phone screens and film noir sets.

SOHO20 Gallery: “Camila Cañeque: synonyms”

SOHO20 will present “Camila Cañeque: synonyms” for the first show of the 2017/2018 exhibition season in the +/- Project Space.

Camila Cañeque’s installation features a piece of ground, human made and likely from an urban environment, recessed in the center and filled with standing water, like a puddle. A departure from her recent work,“synonyms” is Cañeque’s first use of a non-human actant to embody inaction and uses the water to take her place enacting stillness. The installation uses isolation to “toy with” viewers’ patience while suggesting the notion of the in-between, neither above or below the surface.

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